I hope that the current M.Night Shyamalan film Devil returns the Shamhammer to a respectful status. Audiences are not forgiving to directors who fall from their former hieghts.
In the theater, a group of people were watching the trailers right behind me. Devil came on, and through the whole thing the verbal film critic behnd me was reacting appropriately with glee about this suspenseful film he was seeing a preview for. “That looks awesome!” he squeed like an anxious fanboy. Then the name M.Night Shyamalan faded in and he was “oh, nevermind – that’s going to suck”
And this is hardly a new trend. Even the studio has played down selling the movie based on his name. It does look decent, but people are less likely to give it a shot.
But it seems there is hope on the horizon. One of the stories Shamhammer wrote as a proposed sequel to Unbreakable will likely be the basis of the third Night Chronicles films, of which Devil is the first.
I cannibalized the idea for the sequel to ‘Unbreakable’ for one of the Night Chronicles…It was such a cool idea for a villain, and it was actually originally in the script for ‘Unbreakable,’ and it was too much…There were too many villains, so I pulled this villain out and was like, ‘I’ll make this the second flick.’…I fleshed it out more and more, and thought, ‘This could be a standalone movie.’
I’ll just say it: the third ‘Night Chronicles’ movie is what would have been the sequel [to ‘Unbreakable’].
The first of the films slated as the Night Chronicles is of course Devil. The “Night Chronicles” title was dropped from promotion due to the negative association, but the studio is still confident in the film. The second appears to be Twelve Strangers, which we are hearing movement on now.
So this third could be an unofficial sequel to Unbreakable, but likely not called Unbreakable 2.
I didn’t think Unbreakable needed a sequel, but I really dug the idea of a superhero movie without all the flash and tights of your typical action film. Another story set in that same tone would be great.
Unbreakable is my favourite M.Night film.
